<p>I'm a junior (class of 2013 ftw!) and we're just starting our college counselling process, and I was wondering how other high schools did the college process.</p>
<p>We have to fill out this survey that is 73 short answer questions long, and then we'll have our first meeting some time between January and April. We leave that meeting with a (long) list of colleges to research. Then we have more meetings... I'm not really sure what happens after this, but it seems like a good system.</p>
<p>My school does almost the same thing, but during the fall we have one or two colleges visit each day, so we get the miss a period. It is pretty nice, because its not like 100 kids coming to these college visit meetings, its like 3 or 4.</p>
<p>We have visits like that for seniors, and yeah, they’re usually pretty small. My school is small though, so everything is pretty small. :)</p>
<p>I think ours is very similar to yours. I don’t know about the whole 73 question test, but I do know that Juniors meet with their counselor during their junior year and with PSAT scores and GPA, together they decide which colleges are plausible. I don’t know what happens after this. I believe that it’s the student’s responsibility to make appointments with counselor afterwards.</p>
<p>I wishhh my high school did any of these things. Counselors all focus on seniors apparently and I, a junior actually have to makee appointments to speak with my counselor for like 10 minutes.</p>
<p>My school doesn’t do much. Our senior year, the senior counselor will send out to all the seniors copies of their transcripts with notes on them and suggestions for colleges, but that’s pretty much the extent of “counseling” from them.</p>
<p>We meet with our counsellor once a week for a semester every year starting freshman year in a small group of like 5 and can meet with our counsellor privately if we want. Junior year we have to do a private meeting or two and then we have to fill out a short survey with short answer questions for their rec.</p>
<p>We drop our religion classes twice a cycle (twice every 8 days), once for double period lab (whatever science we have) and the other for a class called Group Guidance (its not really a class) and junior and senior year is focused on college advising and the college counselors meets with our religion class once a cycle (once every 8 days) and talk to us about the different aspects of college admissions/life and answer all of our questions about common app,ect extremely helpful, my school has a extremely strong guidance department, the only downside is is that they require earlier deadlines for ED/EA/RD. but different colleges come in during the lunch period so we can learn about certain colleges during our lunch. really helpful!</p>
<p>My school literally does nothing college wise. At the end of junior year, they call us in and tell us if we are in track to graduate (basically if we’ve failed more than two semesters of a class). At my school, you can pretty much go your whole high school life and never say a word to your counselor.</p>
<p>I agree with readytolearn because my high school is exactly like that, nobody ever says a word to my counselor. You could practically go through high school without saying a word to my counselor.</p>
<p>How does my school do college counseling?</p>
<p>Not very well.</p>
<p>GC/VPs met with students as frosh at a planning for your future assembly and had a meeting for frosh parents.
Gave out a calender of when to takes SATs, APs, Subject tests, ACT.
Other parents in the same school district used to crash the parent meeting because our hs was the only one that did this for the student body.</p>
<p>I’ve never even spoken to my counselor before.</p>
<p>We have a talk with our counselors sometime around March of Junior year. I talk with my GC all the time though, cause he’s also the coach of our tennis team which I am a part of. Also, there are college visits in school were a rep from a school comes and talks about the school. I think my school does college counseling pretty well.</p>
<p>I call it the “older kids and collegeconfidential” plan. Basically, you talk to older students/current college freshman, and they explain exactly what tests you need to take, ECs you need to do, awards that are good & bad, etc. They then refer you to this website, where you collect the rest. 1 meeting with the counselor midterm in the first semester of senior year gets transcripts/school forms sent out, and that’s it.</p>
<p>Even among the “smart” kids, only those in debate ever get into ivies/top schools, because they are the only ones with the older friends necessary to understand the process.</p>
<p>Wow, some of you guys have it so lucky you have no idea. At my school, the only way you can get college advice is if you actively seek out the counselor and schedule an appointment, which takes a couple of days. And the counselor only knows about the local colleges and some popular in-state ones. He literally had no idea what to tell me about the common application or applying out of state. I had to do all the research on my own. All I have to say is thank god for this and other college websites.</p>
<p>At our local public, the counselors have about 400-500 students. They split classes so each counselor has about 200-250 students graduating each year. They check the students graduation in general terms, and let the seniors know through an assembly that they need to request transcripts, etc. They are good about giving out the deadlines for such services but in general that’s it. If you want info on specific schools, where would you best be placed, you are on your own. It is somewhat common here to hire a private counselor, if you want to attend a school outside the state or geographic area.</p>
<p>Disappointing but…</p>
<p>In December of senior year, we had an assembly about the importance of going to college. The guest speaker handed out books called “Gear Up 4 Success” and told us that we could do anything as long as we believed we could.</p>
<p>That’s the full extent of “counseling” at my school.</p>
<p>^I died laughing…lol</p>
<p>My school is a big public high school that caters to 700 students per class. My counselor is more concerned with getting everyone to graduate on time than with helping top students with college ambitions.</p>
<p>In essence, we have zero college counseling. A lot of my classmates have turned to private counselors that cost big bucks (upwards of $200 per “counseling session” that lasts one hour…lol), but that’s not a financial possibility for me.</p>
<p>They do nothing. Yeahhhh.</p>